Theodore H. Rand

“ Naked and lustrous,
Fiercest of smiters,
Straight for the stern cliffs,
Iron to steel!
Shock unto shock calls,
Boom answers boom,
Roars the huge tide-loom,
Thunder and storm!
Torn are the vast webs
Woven of tumult,
Flung to the cloud-rack,
Tatters of sound!
II.
The glistening waters again
Are marching loyal and true
Under the hollow sky,—
A hundred million of men
Throbbing as fiery dew
Under the morning's eye!
List to the repetend note,
Multiplex tone of the sea,
Refrain of grief, of mirth,
On violet air afloat
Far borne to mountain and lea,
To the home of its birth. ”

“ Ere as a flash of streaming light it cleaves
The dewy darkness of the trickling dell;
So for a moment halted the sweet child,
Took one step forward, and then leapt into
The arms where death-shade once was deep as night,
But where commingling love now glads the gloom,
All lit by the sweet azure of the heart.
With head thrown back, and questioning eyes agaze:
"Father—you're—changed!" he said, "but by the love,
We know each other—by the love, the love!" ”

“ So closes life's full day, its guerdon won,
To those whose trustful souls are joined to Him—
The world's great Light—whose hand the splendors limn
At once of breaking day and day that's done.
BEN SHALOM.
Ben Shalom read one night from out a roll:
"Vessel of honor, consecrate ('O soul!')
Prepared for every worthy work, and meet
For the Master's use!" And finger on scroll,
He prayed aloud: "Make me his silvern bowl!" ”

“ The vapor lifts! Again the sea gleams bright;
The heavens have hid within their chambers far
Cloud-stuff of gossamer, from which are spun
To-morrow's skyey pomps inwove with light,
The belted splendors for the rising sun,
And rosy curtains for the evening star.
[Pg 28]
PARTRIDGE ISLAND.
The title deeds of these rich shores are thine
By age,—thine, too, by succor and defence;
Ere they were kissed by winds, or waves beat thence,
Thy breast of beauty broke the beating brine.
All hail, fair Isle, first born! Thy jeweled shrine
Is worn by pilgrim feet ”

“ The furious tide in elemental fight
Is lashing fierce and hoar with giant might,—
The bleeding shores the tale shall tell the main!
Brave sailor, reeling in thy storm-drunk bark,
Blinded by sheeted rain blown tempest-wild,
And vexed with roaring darkness round about!
The heaven-sent vision fair of wife and child
Calm seated at love's hearth, with face ahark,
Makes thee divine amid the awful rout. ”

“ His soul's prism unfolds
The white thought of God,
In human passion divine.
REVELATION.
As rising waves, rich jeweled by the sun,
In movement link their brilliants each to each,
And flash their glories in one crest of light,
E'en so, unveiling, the Eternal One
Did shew Himself by signs and glimmering speech,
Then flashed in Christ His love-lit glory bright.
[Pg 59]
LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
Through skies of molten gold and green the sun
Floats with its cloud-wake o'er the glowing rim
Of closing day; the same horizon brim
Glows green and gold with a glad day begun. ”

“ A waft of Vikings' wine!
Now beats the pulse of the flood,
The throbbings deep of a heart
Felt all around the world;
Now smites its rhythm with a thud,—
With ictus sure of its art
That mountains huge has hurled.
The unsouled rivers and creeks
Have being, have life to the full,
Into their mouths rebreathed,
As heaves the broad breast that seeks
T' embosom each leaning hull,
Bare on red banks tide-seethed. ”

“ In hush it swept the awful curve adown,
The shadow that its rushing speed did cast
Concealed the Father's hand, the Kingly crown.
Into the deeps an age has passed since then,
Yet evermore for me, more humble grown,
The vision of His awesome presence veiled,
Burns in the flying spheres, still all unknown,
In nature's mist-immantled seas unsailed,
And in the deeper shadowed hearts of men.
[Pg 36]
RESISTLESS FATE.
Resistless fate and iron destiny
Are writ upon the tide—its branded mark.
It comes and goes heedless of wind or bark,
Nature's untamed and tameless energy. ”

“ May look far in beyond the outward sight
And, unconsumëd, see His fiery flame.
[Pg 18]
A WILLOW AT GRAND PRÉ.
The fitful rustle of thy sea-green leaves
Tells of the homeward tide, and free-blown air
Upturns thy gleaming leafage like a share,—
A silvery foam thy bosom, as it heaves!
O peasant tree, the regal Bay doth bare
Its throbbing breast to ebbs and floods—and grieves!
O slender fronds, pale as a moonbeam weaves,
Joy woke your strain that trembles to despair! ”

“ Upon the Master's breast, spoke words that yeaned
The pity of his heart for those that sit
In heathen night, nor know Christ's torch is lit;
Marie Depure, her soul winged like a dove
Eager to bear the news of light and love,
Gave of her humble toil more than they all,—
Since love makes willing answer to Love's call.
Amazed, the man of God to Marie said:
"Your gift is great, a part I take instead;"
But she, with sweet insistence, spake him, "Nay,
I'm richer far than those who see the day.
"These workers of the golden straw buy oil,
When darkness falls, that they may see to toil ”

“ And cool with dusky air in which, all still,
Eye-bright and fronded fern and lichened spruce
Swam deep in voiceless sea of wildwood balm—
My eye had sight of emerald moss and bells
That wreathed the bearded rocks that once were fire.
"Ho! here is where the fisher lives who sings
All day while fingering nets, and chants the tide
To sleep," cried Harold, "as he tends his seines
At night. Some three-score souls like his would make
A state, and one such state the golden age. ”

“ The air is flecked with night and day,
The ground is tiger-dusk and -gold,
The rocks and trees, empearled in haze,
A soft and far enchantment hold.
The place is peopled with shy winds
Whose fitful plumes waft dewy balm
From all the wildwood, and let fall
An incommunicable calm.
Through cleft rocks green with spray-wet moss,
Deep in the sweet wood's golden glooms,
The amber waters pulsing go,
With foam like creamy lily blooms.
Shuttles of shadow and of light
In-gleam and -gloom the watery woof
As rolls the endless stream away
Beneath the wind-swayed leafy roof. ”

“ Flashed on thy breast from dawn to evening star.
Soon herds of sweet-breathed kine of sere Canard,
Whose eager hoofs the hasting morn outrun,
Sea of lush clover aftermath has won,
And golden-girdled bees anear and far.
Lo, as the harvest moon comes up the sky,
Her shield of argent mellowed to the rim,
The phantom of the buried tide doth flow ”

“ Would that I knew whence Light, its fountainhead?"
The Master whispered in the Rabbi's ear:
"The Holy One, blessëd be He, in white
Himself doth robe, and then the whole world clear
In beauty glows with His majestic light."
"Sayest thou so? That's word for word the psalm:
'The light Thy garment is which Thou dost wear.'
Thou tell'st it here a secret 'neath the palm,
O Master thou of seven with whitened hair!" ”

“ The pillared heights are lifted into view
In spectral power reposeful as divine.
A timeless peace abides in every line
Soft moulded from the quarries of the dew,
Yet fateful fire the inmost heart throbs through,
And thunder slumbers in the brows benign.
Paling before the massive whiteness there,
The faltering moon comes up the waiting night;
The faithful stars, like folded lilies, sleep
Till Love's wide wonder of the lullëd air
Melts with its rose-tipt crests in azure deep,
And sets the skyey plains abloom with light.
[Pg 27]
SEA FOG.
Here danced an hour ago a sapphire sea ”

“ In white-spruce bower, with outlook on the sea,
Kingcups and daisies dancing down the slope,
And broad-winged ships, world-messengers of hope,
Furling their plumes or lifting them all free
To catch the skyey airs—here 'tis that we
Oft watch the fringes of the tide, where ope
The swinging doors through which all blind-fold grope
The muffled waves of shoreless mystery.
The touch of two vast worlds is on us now. ”

“ Without, with stories of the deep o'er-writ,—
How fairy slight the thunderous seas to ride!
The massy tides gride over reef and ledge,
And sudden waves from fell Euroclydon
Dash to swift death the sailor in the Bay;
But this, all lipt with pearl, and on the edge
Of doom—the fingers of a babe might slay—
Sleeps in the stressful surge at Blomidon. ”

“ Man's puny apprehension doth correct
From age to age, and turns afresh the sod.
The vast historic temple now is trod
'Neath loftier roof and heavenlier aspéct;
New light, new need, revealed, each ripe defect
Goes down beneath man's feet diviner shod.
Alas, humanity no more can grasp
Of thought of the divine Artificer,
Than holds of ocean crinkled shell on beach!
Yet His unfolding plan in vital clasp
Possess, O human soul, amid the stir
Of speeding worlds Love's flying-goal to reach!
[Pg 56]
BEN NACHMANI.
"O the brightness, clearness, beauty of heaven! ”

“ The rich-hued passion of his soul, secure
In art that should for evermore endure,—
But as he wrought his vision was defloured.
For sake of art divine a seer bright-stoled,
Whose eyes had drunk the steadfast splendors true
Of sacred gems, this precious secret told:
"Oft sight of these doth color-sense renew!"
Ah thus, true soul assoiled of life, thou ey'st,
Mid thy enduring work, the quickening Christ! ”

“ My heart thrills like the wilding sap to flowers,
And leaps as a swoln brook in summer rain
Past meadows green to the great sea untold.
O month divine, all fresh with falling showers,
Waft, waft from open heaven thy balm for pain,
Life and sweet Earth are young, God grows not old!
[Pg 47]
AN INLAND SPRUCE.
Peasant of northern forests, humble tree,
Kirtled and frocked in all-year homespun green,
And lacking not among thy kind the mien
Of such as bear the white sails gallantly!
Magician thou! ”

“ The deep night's tide-line pacing with our strides!
More weird than winkings of the ruddy Mars
These flitting gleams and breaths of hell and heaven,
Searching the shadowy folds 'twixt peace and dread!—
Nor dreamed I such solemnities did leaven
Life's daily meal and league its dole of bread
With unseen forces vaster than the stars'. ”

“ Color had fled the air and sky,
A stony stillness held the earth,
Virtue had gone from out all things,
Man's ebbing life was nothing worth.
And as I wept within my dream
And knew my pulse of being slowed,
I sudden was aware of change—
A flush on pallid nature showed!
Lo, heralds of the arriving year!
The bugled flock beclangs the blue,
The hyla pipes by willowed run,
The flashing swallow skims the dew.
Up from the rampike's ghastly arms
The gold-shaft high-hole's challenge floats,
While greening hill and valley laugh
And shore breaks out in pæan notes. ”

“ Belted and helmed 'neath God's red thunder-flails;
World climes upon thy many-cloven crests,
And ordered kingdoms in thy fertile vales!
BEAUTY.
The grace of strength the shaggy hills attest,
And cresting billows in their power serene;
Beauty was suckled at no weakling's breast,
She sits the manëd lion like a queen. ”

“ To sphinx-like Blomidon.
Why are thy glories untold?
Thy cliffs of purple and red
And crystal-veinëd rocks,
Thy hasting waters deep-rolled
'Neath skies whose colors are spread
With art that all art mocks;
Thy faltering ranks of white mist
Flanking vast floods and vast ebbs—
A mimicry of war,—
Oriflammes of dew-sprent list,
Banners of gossamer webs,
Soft blown as lights of Thor!
II.
The smooth shining flats all bare
To the heavens' nakedest ken,
Mirror the hills, like lakes.
The drowsy lull of the air
Will stir anew to life when
The tidal note awakes. ”

“ Right-reason's sun-glad banner from the height,
While rage the Furies in their cave beneath!
Hush, hush, it is the daybreak of the world!
Man's warring sky is passing out of night,
And stark black demons flit with sword in sheath. ”

“ In haste the fluttering robe, whose glory floats
In pictured folds, her eager soul devotes—
Lo, she with her winged harper sweeps the sky!
Splendors of blossomed time, like poppies red,
Distil dull slumbers o'er the engagëd soul
And thrall with sensuous pomp its azured dower;
Till, roused by vibrant touch from the unseen Power,
The spirit keen, freed from the painted dead,
On wings mounts up to reach its living Goal. ”

“ A lark rose free in its grey singing robe.
"O miracle of life," in speech he broke,
"A bird is greater than the solid globe!"
III.
But yesterday I saw a hillside grove
Whose trunks were clad with lichens grey as frost;
At night a storm of rain and wind fierce drove,—
Each bole to-day in living green's embossed!
And so, I said, the clinging lives which make
Yearful and spectral those who yield them ruth,
Shall, when o'er these the night in storm doth break,
Wreathe them in freshness of immortal youth. ”

“ Into the far repose of zonëd light,
Thou strivest to attain nirvâna-blue.
Mottled, or plumed, or ribbed, or ripple-barred,
Encamped upon the unfenced fields of space,
Unsullied are thy tents cool-washed in air;
And when morn's bugle blows, or sky's new-starred,
Thy cohorts wait day's coming, parting face,
Like flocks of rosy angels drifting there.
[Pg 40]
DAY AND NIGHT.
And so the strife goes on from age to age,
In ceaseless round of victory and defeat:
Young Day comes forth, sun-clad, with shining feet,
In beauteous pomp, and throws his battle-gage. ”